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Mary Tighe
Irish | period =1805-1810 | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | influences = | influenced = }} Mary Tighe (October 9, 1772 - March 24, 1810), was an Anglo-Irish poet. Life Overview Tighe, daughter of a clergyman, made an unhappy marriage, though she had beauty and amiable manners, and was highly popular in society. She wrote a good deal of verse; but her chief poem was a translation in Spenserian stanza of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, which won the admiration of such men as Sir J. Mackintosh, Moore, and Keats.John William Cousin, "Tighe, Mary," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 382. Wikisource, Web, Mar. 13, 2018. Family Tige was born Mary Blachford in Ireland, daughter of Rev. William Blachford and his wife Theodosia, daughter of William Tighe of Rosanna, Co. Wicklow. Her father, a clergyman of property, was librarian of Marsh's library in Dublin, and was also in charge of St. Patrick's Library in that city. Her mother was a granddaughter of John Bligh, first earl of Darnley, and a lineal descendant of Edward Hyde, first earl of Clarendon.Lee, 388. Adult life Miss Blanchford was a very beautiful woman. In 1793 she married her cousin, Henry Tighe of Woodstock, co. Wicklow, who represented the borough of Inistioge, Kilkenny, in the Irish parliament from 1790 until the treaty of union. The marriage was not happy. About 1803 or 1804 she developed consumption. Moore, writing to his mother, 22 Aug. 1805, says: "Poor Mrs. Tighe is ordered to the Madeiras, which makes me despair of her, for she will not go, and another winter will inevitably be her death" (Russell, Memoirs of Moore, i. 185). She died at the residence of her brother-in-law, in Woodstock, co. Kilkenny, and was buried in the churchyard of Inistioge. Writing Tighe's poem Psyche; or, The legend of love, founded on the story of Cupid and Psyche as related in the Golden Ass of Apuleius, was privately printed in 1805. There seems to have been an earlier edition in 1795. The poem is written in the Spenserian stanza, and has decided merit (cf. Quarterly Review, May 1811). The verse is melodious, and the tale is told with pleasing directness and simplicity. Psyche, or the legend of love is Mary Tighe's rendition of the Greco-Roman folktale of Cupid and Psyche, which is recorded in The Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses) by Lucius Apuleius, the Silver Age Roman author. Psyche, or the Legend of Love was privately printed (50 copies) in 1805, and republished posthumously in 1811 with other, previously unpublished works by Longman, London)Etext of Psyche from the 1811 ed. The story is about a princess named Psyche who is so beautiful that the people of her kingdom begin to worship her as the goddess Venus. Venus becomes envious of the attention that Psyche receives and sends her son Cupid to Psyche to make her fall in love with a monster. Instead Cupid falls in love with Psyche, and marries her without his mother's knowledge. He whisks her away to a far-away palace, where she is served by invisible servants, and he visits her only at night, so she won't find out his true identity. One night Psyche's curiosity gets the better of her, and after he falls asleep she lights a lamp to see her husband's face. When she realises her husband is no monster, rather a god, she is so surprised a drop of oil falls from her lamp and burns Cupid, waking him. He flees, and to regain her husband Psyche seeks the help of his mother Venus, who sends her out to complete various tasks in penance. In her final task, she is sent to retrieve a box from the underworld containing some of Proserpina's beauty. Although instructed not to look inside the box, she opens it, and Psyche is overcome by a never-ending sleep. Cupid saves her, and in the end Psyche is transformed into a goddess herself by Jupiter.Mary Tighe, Wikipedia, September 25, 2017. Wikimedia Commons. Web, Mar. 13, 2018. [ The bulk of Tighe's version of the story is taken from Apuleius, but her poem, written in Spenserian stanzas, is riddled with small details which point to Cupid's and Psyche's shared characteristics and equal standing, implying that their love is mutual, and this idea is taken further in the heavily adapted second half of the epic, where Cupid joins Psyche on her penitent journey. In the first encounter between the two lovers, Tighe mirrors a passage from Apuleius but reverses the roles, showing the similarities between the two. As Cupid comes to Psyche at his mother's request, ready to use his love-inducing arrows, he leans over her, but is then overcome by her beauty and: :The dart which in his hand now trembling stood, :As o'er the couch he bent with ravished eye, :Drew with its daring point celestial blood :From his smooth neck's unblemished ivory: (canto 1, 244–247). Much of the same imagery is found in the Metamorphoses, but later in Apuleius’ narrative, as Psyche is overcome at the sight of Cupid and the weapons that testify to his divinity. Tighe was familiar with the ancient novel, so this similarity is likely deliberate. The novelist writes: :Now Psyche, with her insatiable mind, examined these with more than a little curiosity, and as she was studying and admiring the weapons of her husband, trembling she drew one arrow from the quiver to test the point on the tip of her thumb, but she pressed too deeply, so that tiny drops of rosy-red blood dotted her skin like dew. Thus did unknowing Psyche suddenly fall in love with Love, burning more and more with desire for Desire. (Apul. Met. 5.23). The many similarities between the 2 passages strengthen the relationship and the comparison between the 2 figures. Arrows are held with “trembling” hands, blood stains perfect skin, and neither is aware of the fateful prick. In Tighe’s version, Cupid is as much a victim of himself as Psyche is, and she makes explicit that her feelings are mutual. In a major departure from Apuleius’ storyline, Cupid accompanies Psyche on her series of trials, disguised as a white knight on his own journey to regain his beloved. This unique element of Tighe’s narrative serves to emphasise the equal responsibility of both genders in romantic relationships. When the white knight first introduces himself to Psyche, hiding his true identity as Cupid, he tells her: :“I too (he said) divided from my love, :“The offended power of Venus deprecate, :“Like thee, through paths untrodden, sadly rove :“In search of that fair spot prescribed by fate, :“The blessed term of my afflicted state,” (canto 3, 127–131). By describing him thus, Cupid becomes a male version of Psyche, needing to perform his own series of trials to become worthy of his lover. The tasks Venus sends them to do cease to be a form of penance and become a mutual journey, and both lovers grow as individuals, helping each other to defeat various vices and temptations, in a very moralising and Christian version of the Roman tale. She also makes allusions to Spencer's Fairie Queene during Psyche's final task set by Venus. "A cruel monster now her steps pursued, Well known of yore and named the Blatant Beast". Psyche was published in 1811, after her death, with other poems. A 4th edition appeared the next year, and a 5th in 1816. Other editions were published in 1843 and 1853. It was printed in Philadelphia in 1812. Critical reputation Psyche has suffered equally from excessive praise and undue disparagement. Mackintosh considered the last three cantos to be of exquisite beauty, and "beyond all doubt the most faultless series of verses ever produced by a woman" (Life, ii. 195–6). Mrs. Hemans was greatly touched by Mrs. Tighe's poetry; she wrote a poem in her memory entitled "The Grave of a Poetess," and another "I stood where the life of song lay low," after she visited Mrs. Tighe's grave. Leigh Hunt allows Psyche a languid beauty. It drew from Moore the laudatory lines "To Mrs. Henry Tighe on reading her 'Psyche'," beginning "Tell me the witching tale again." In 1806, however, Moore wrote to Miss Godfrey: "I regret very much to find that she Tighe is becoming so furieusement littéraire; one used hardly to get a peep at her blue stockings, but now I am afraid she shows them up to the knee" (Moore, Diary, ed. Lord John Russell, viii. 61).Lee, 389. John Keats was another of her admirers and paid tribute to her in his poem, "To Some Ladies." Pam Perkins writes that "despite the bleakness of many of the short poems in the 1811 volume, in much of the nineteenth-century writing on Tighe there is a tendency to make her an exemplar of patiently (and picturesquely) long-suffering femininity, a tendency exemplified most famously in Felicia Hemans's tribute to her, 'The Grave of a Poetess.'"Pam Perkins, “Tighe , Mary (1772–1810),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 14 Apr. 2007. Recognition Some pieces of hers appear in the Amulet, 1827-1828. At Inistioge a monument, said to be by Flaxman, marks her grave (cf. Chorley, Memorials of Mrs. Hemans, ii. 209-219). In the 1811 edition of Psyche is a portrait engraved by Caroline Watson from Comerford's miniature, after a picture by Romney; and for the 1816 edition the same miniature was less successfully engraved by Scriven. Publications Poetry *''Psyche, or the Legend of Love. London: C. Whittingham, for James Carpenter, 1805; New York: Garland, 1978. *Psyche, with other poems. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1811; Philadelphia:J. & A.Y. Humphreys, 1812. *''Keats and Mary Tighe: The poems of Mary Tighe, with parallel passages from the works of John Keats (edited by Earle Vonard Weller). New York: Century, for the Modern Language Association of America, 1928. *''Collected Poetry'' (edited by Brian C. Cooney & Paula R. Feldman). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Novel *''Selena'' (edited by Harriet Kramer Linkin). Farnham, Surrey, UK, & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012. Collected editions *''Collected Poems and Journals'' (edited by Harriet Kramer Linkin). Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. Journals *''Mary: A series of reflections during 20 years'' (edited by William Tighe). Dublin: privately published, 1811. *''Irish Women Writers of the Romantic Era: Papers of Mary Tighe and Lady Sydney Morgan from the National Library of Ireland''. Marlborough, Wiltshire, UK: Adam Matthews, 2005. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Mary Tighe, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Dec. 21, 2016. See also *List of Irish poets References *Blain, Virginia, et al., eds. "Tighe, Mary," The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990, 1081. *Perkins, Pam. “Tighe , Mary (1772–1810).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press, 2004. * . Wikisource, Web, Dec. 21, 2016. Notes External links ;Poems *Mary Tighe at PoemHunter (7 poems) *Mary Tighe (1772-1810) at English Poetry, 1579-1830 (Psyche; or, The legend of love) *Mary Tighe at Poetry Nook (50 poems) ;About *Mary Tighe at Ricorso * Tighe, Mary Category:1772 births Category:1810 deaths Category:People from Dublin (city) Category:Irish poets Category:Irish women writers Category:19th-century women writers Category:Deaths from tuberculosis Category:Women poets Category:Infectious disease deaths in Ireland Category:Irish women poets Category:18th-century Irish people Category:19th-century Irish people Category:18th-century poets Category:Poets Category:19th-century poets Category:English-language poets